The question is not "EU in or out?".

Even mature Christians are arguing the case on entirely the wrong grounds.

"If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned.

And if at another time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be built up and planted,
and if it does evil in my sight and does not obey me, then I will reconsider the good I had intended to do for it." Jer: 18:7-10

The division in the nation over Brexit is as profound as it is manifest; no less in the Christian church. This is a tragedy: but not because of the upset. Rather it illustrates that Christians – even ‘mature’ Christians – are using the entirely wrong criteria when coming to a view.

Almost everywhere I hear pros and cons being argued on socio-political or economic grounds: this dynamic is exactly the same as that found in the secular world. It is very sad.

However amongst the more discerning I see and hear things being assessed from an entirely different (read ‘spiritual’) perspective.

The EU is a modern-day tyrannical and totalitarian despot: it is – at its heart – a profoundly anti-God system. So the real question is not whether we should stay in Europe or leave, but rather whether it is God’s purpose – in His mercy – to deliver us from the Babel-like system; or, alternatively use the EU to bring judgement upon us; the judgement which we are truly most deserving.

It has ever been the way of God to use one nation (or nations) to bring judgement upon another.

Anyone who has the most rudimentary knowledge of Scripture will know God said of the Assyrians that He would use them as “a rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath” (Isa. 10:5): the Babylonians in like manner (Jer 32:29).
Indeed it has ever been the way of God to use one nation (or nations) to bring judgement upon another.

However it is also the case that God’s uses ‘judgement’ to bring about His mercy. Irrespective of the final outcome of the utter mess which is Brexit, it is most likely that the UK will experience – in the short term at least – massive turmoil. But it may indeed be that massive turmoil is needed in order to bring us – literally and metaphorically – to our knees. And in our despair that we might cry out to God.

LORD, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds,
O LORD. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy. Habakkuk 3:2